Defenders of Eternity
by daccu65
Summary: An attempt to understand why the Others are on the offensive, told by one of their elders.


Hello all, before saying anything else, I must say that none of the concepts or characters appearing in A Song of Ice and Fire are mine. This story is not intended to generate profit. It was written simply for my enjoyment in doing so and, hopefully, your enjoyment in reading.

The following represents my efforts to understand the Others and the reason they are on the move again, by telling a story told by one of their elders to the newly risen. That said, please enjoy:

When the oldest of us first emerged from the comforting ice that sheltered us from the heat and light of the sun, we knew very little about this world. We only knew that the sun harmed us and the ice sheltered us. With this sliver of lore, we set out to learn of the world.

One of the first things we learned was that the world was divided between land and water and that the deep waters of the seas and oceans were death to us. At this time, we did not understand why, we only understood that it was. We also learned that we could survive exposure to the sun for a time, absorbing the light and heat it emits...but we would eventually need to return to the deep ice to sleep and allow the ice to purge us of the energies the sun inflicted upon us.

We continued to search our world, finding ocean waters beneath the ice to the very far north but finding something of even more interest to the south...other beings that we called the children of the sun. From observing these children we learned both of them and ourselves. We learned that the children came in two forms; those who moved and those who didn't. Those who didn't move sunk roots into the earth and used the heat and light of the sun to grow. Those who moved consumed either those who didn't move, or others who moved. In any case, the children of the sun are dependent upon the sun, filling themselves with an energy that we call life. We also learned that our strength, our own form of life, is dependent upon the slow trickle of energy, be it light, heat or life, through our own bodies and to the eternal ice of our home.

Always remember this, such energies are both our nourishment and our bane. The slow flow of energy through us to the endless ice gives strength and movement to our forms, but too much breaks the bonds that hold us together. It was at this time, shortly after encountering the children of the sun for the first time, that we realized why the oceans held death for us...they are the embodiment of energy and motion, even as we are the embodiment of cold eternity.

As time went by, we realized that most of the children of the sun were mortal...they came into being, aged and died with the passage of time. To counter this, they had the ability to reproduce themselves. We also realized that the mobile children had varying degrees of intelligence...some of whom even approached our own. At roughly the time we learned of the seasons, the endless cycle of winter and summer, we also learned that we could use certain of the sunlings to reproduce our own kind. We learned to take the young of two certain types of the sunlings, those we now call the giants and the Children of the Forest. By shaping the very spirit of eternity and exposing these young to the deepest glaciers, where unending cold and dark ground against eternal stone, we could infuse these young with the embodiment of eternity and thus replace those of us who we had lost to mishap over the years. We were amazed that the sunlings opposed these efforts.

Even though long ages have passed, this still puzzles me. The sunlings are doomed to age and die so when we take them for our own purposes, we only expedite the inevitable. The reason they oppose us does not matter; only the fact that they do so is important. The giants fought us with their great strength while the children of the forest fought us with magic and skill. The Children of the Forest learned to build weapons of dragonglass, an embodiment of solid fire, while we learned to form implements from the densest ice at the base of the thickest glaciers. With such implements, we contested with the other sentients.

Whenever winter came onto the land, we would move south into the areas where such folk lived and took such of their young as we could. When the seasons changed and became warmer, we retreated to the north, where the cold always held sway. In the back and forth we learned still more; we learned that we lived on a continent that was joined to another down in the lands to the south that were always warm. We also learned that we could also absorb the life of the sunlings, making them rise again as our servants, even though it hastened the time in which we needed to return to our sleep under the ice. Not long after we learned we could raise fallen sunlings as thralls, a new form of sentient began to cross onto our continent.

I could describe how these children of the sun differed from the previous, but that is a tale for another season. The important issue is that these new sunlings contested with the previous. In the course of the struggle, the Children of the Forest used powerful magic and shattered the land bridge that connected our continent from the other. At first, we did not see the implications of this act; we were content to continue as before, taking such sunlings we could, either to create thralls or more of our own. Centuries passed and we learned also that the endless parade of seasons had a cycle of their own. There is a cycle, lasting centuries, during which all seasons become first colder then hotter. However, when the land bridge broke, we eventually noted that the seasons were changing in intensity.

The opening of the seaway to the south allowed a current of warm water to flow up the east shore of our continent. While the seasons continued to march as before, this current made the climate warmer. As the centuries marched on, areas of tundra gave way to plains, ice fields gave way to tundra. Even some of the great glacier where we could either sleep or create more of our kind were lost to the expanding warm lands. The new sunlings, who lived shorter lives than the others and could thus reproduce more quickly, moved into the lands opening up to them. In return, we performed a foolish act.

We attacked the sunlings. In our arrogance, we looked upon them as prey and not as rivals. Since we did not fight among ourselves, we had no concept of a fragile peace strengthened by an outside threat. When we attacked the sunlings, the Children of the Forest, the giants, and the men joined forces against us. Even so, it was a long and near thing.

Telling tales of the battle accomplish nothing. In the end, we lost and retreated farther to the north while the sunlings raised a great wall to keep us and our servants from their lands. While cycles of cold and warm continued to follow each other, the climate along the east coast continued to become slowly warmer. A forest even grew north of the wall, where once we were able to sleep beneath the ice. However, we learned our lesson and realized that we cannot simply attack the sunlings, we needed to combat them. We retreated to the north, to increase our numbers and hone our powers of cold.

Now is perhaps a good time to point out that the sunlings can easily outnumber us. The area each of them needs to produce the energy they call food is much less than the area each of us require to sleep and disperse our accumulated energy. Because of this, we realized that we could not overcome them in a pitched struggle. We needed to take advantages of our strengths and find a way to reclaim the territories we had lost.

Most of us went beneath the ice to bide their time until the time to act should arrive. Some remained, learning the art of creating the cold blocks; masses of the most dense ice that could absorb light and heat for years. Still a few more stole south every time winter returned to the land, taking such of the sunlings that we could without alerting the rest. For centuries now, the plan appears to have worked. The sunlings, who age and die, have forgotten us. However, we must strike soon, before our preparations are complete.

I have learned that the seaway to the south is expanding. Not only has the warm current brought warmth to much of the eastern continent, erosion has expanded it, wearing at the islands in the channel. The warm current is growing, threatening to thaw still more of the lands we need to sustain ourselves. Winter is coming, and this winter will be the coldest one in the last thousand. We must rise and strike when it does.

When winter comes, we will waken our sleeping kin, gather up our thralls and the cold blocks and march south. The first step will be to assault the sunlings found north of their wall, to raise many more thralls to bear all of the cold blocks we have created. We shall then follow the advancing cold to the wall, where we shall defeat its defenders and breach it, allowing us to move still further south.

The cold blocks will shelter us as we march further south than we have ever been, to the seaway that allows the warm current through. Once there, the blocks will freeze the sea, forming a wall of ice from this continent to the other and choking off the warm current. We are ice incarnate, if the sunlings can raise a wall of ice, we can do even better.

The struggle will be long and hard. Once we form the ice dam, we will need to leave a force in place, sheltered by the waning cold blocks, while the rest of us retreat back to the north to once again marshal our strength. Every winter, we will need to march south again, to reinforce those we leave on the ice dam. We will suffer losses, but those losses won't be in vain. Without the warm current, our continent will grow colder again. With each passing century, we will be able to move our claims farther to the south. Eventually, the continent will once again be ours.

We are the embodiment of cold eternity and in the end, eternity claims all.


End file.
